Thursday, July 24, 2008

In case you're just joining us here in the Wembley Room at Toobworld Central, I've been looking at the episodes of 'Doctor Who' which would have been affected had the change of events in 'Turn Left' remained permanent. Those episodes set in the future and on other planets would have been discarded as having no effect on Earth Prime-Time itself; and yesterday I ran down a summary of those episodes which were covered in 'Turn Left'.

So that leaves us with those episodes that would have had negligible fallout due to the Doctor's absence, and those that should have had a major impact on Toobworld unless there had been some outside help.....

That last option is the most exciting for a caretaker of Toobworld like myself, so I'll save that for last. Therefore, today we'll dismiss those episodes which had no major impact on Toobworld even if the Doctor was removed from the timeline.

We'll begin with the three-part finale of Season Three....."UTOPIA"

"THE SOUND OF DRUMS""LAST OF THE TIME LORDS"Because the Doctor never traveled to the End of Time with his Companion Martha Jones and stowaway Captain Jack Harkness, the Master would never have awakened from his "sleep" as Professor Yana. Yana may have lived far longer than thought possible by those humans around him, but he may have then had the time to finally figure out what needed to be done to send the spaceship containing the last of Mankind rocketing off to "Utopia".

Yana would have been left behind with his faithful assistant Chantho to face the terrors of the Futurekind alone. Eventually, should he have lived long enough against those savages, Yana would "die" of old age and only then regenerate - if it was an involuntary measure. Based on what we've seen though with John Simm's Master and with the fate of the Doctor in the revised version of his battle with the Racnoss Queen, regeneration appears to depend on the Gallifreyan being aware of the approaching doom. Then he or she has the option to invoke the ability to regenerate.But even if he had regenerated, that doesn't mean his memories of being the Master would have come back to him. Not that it really mattered - with the spaceship long gone, he would have been stuck on that planet anyway with no escape from the Futurekind. I think in the end, he and Chantho would have committed suicide rather than risk being torn apart alive by those cannibals.

And with the Master either dead or stuck in the far Future, he couldn't come back in Time to become Harold Saxon and assume the mantle of leadership as the Prime Minister of Great Britain. He also wouldn't have been able to track down the last survivors of the human race at the so-called Utopia and then transform them into those killing machines he dubbed "the Toclafane".

So the decimation of Earth would never have taken place, Martha's apartment would never have blown up (although she would have been dead anyway), and the American President would never have been killed. (The fact that the American President wasn't the same as should be found on Earth Prime-Time is a different topic altogether.)

"THE LAZARUS EXPERIMENT"And since Harold Saxon never existed, Professor Richard Lazarus never would have received funding from him to complete his work on the machine that could reverse aging. It's possible that he might have found the grants elsewhere, but it's more likely that eventually he would have died before finishing the experiment. Thus, that monstrosity he had become would never have come into being to terrorize the populace of London.

"HUMAN NATURE""THE FAMILY OF BLOOD"Without the Doctor, those "mayflies" known as The Family of Blood would not have any reason to visit that English village in 1913. (If they are the same as in the original novel about Doctor #7, their alien race would be the Aubertide.) Therefore, the lives of Mr. Clarke, Lucy Cartwright, Jeremy Baines, and Jenny the maid would have all been spared.

Of course, this would have affected the timeline, as Baines would have gone off to war against the Germans a few years later. And even if he was not killed there, he would have surely killed some of the Bosch and changed their destinies. If he survived, he would have returned home to England, perhaps raised a family and thus furthered muddied the timeline.

Lucy would have grown up and perhaps she and Jenny would also eventually have children which would have caused a ripple effect down along the time-stream as those children had children, and so on. As for Mr. Clarke, I think his continued existence would have been negligible, as he was pretty well set in his ways by that point in his life. If he was married, he probably already had children so their existence was never in question. Their destinies, on the other hand, could have altered had he lived.But all in all, it doesn't look like their new lease on life had any major impact on the overall timeline for Toobworld as seen in "Turn Left". As for young Tim Latimer and Phillips, I think their lives would have played out in the same manner - thanks to Tim's precognitive ability (and even without the watch)."BLINK"

This episode, in my opinion the greatest episode of any TV show of any genre in 2007 (and awarded the Toobit Award as such), would follow along the same paths as established with the "Family of Blood" two-parter. The Weeping Angels would have had no reason to come to Earth if the Doctor was not there, therefore Billy Shipton and Cathy Nightingale would never have been sent back into the past. They would have "lived to death" in the present onwards, and who knows how their lives would have turned out.

This means that Billy didn't marry his own Sally back in 1969 and raise a family; and Cathy didn't begin her family tree in Hull, 1920 (which would have included her grandson, seen here). So the loss of those Toobworldlings would have caused some effect on the timeline, but again, not to any overwhelming effect as far as we could see in "Turn Left".

And finally, that 1/8th of an episode...."TIME CRASH"Since the Doctor was dead, he never would have had the opportunity to meet his former self, the Fifth Incarnation of the Doctor, when he forgot to raise the shields of the TARDIS upon leaving Martha. (Besides, as already stated, she was dead too.) So there was never going to be an emergency that could have caused a rip in the space-time continuum, the size of Belgium. And thus, no need for either one of them to employ the old razzle-dazzle of that wibbley wobbley timey-wimey stuff.

So that leaves with us with four episodes to deal with - four and 3/37ths episodes, that is. I've added a few more bits and pieces..... (Don't mind me. I get paid to do math and I don't even know what I'm talking about! Good thing I'm not officially an accountant, because I can't even account for myself. Thank you, Firesign Theater!)

Anyhoo.....

I'm thinking now that with each of those episodes, we'll focus a little more on them separately. And that means we can stretch out this series of Tiddlywinkydinks for another five installments.....

Just An Old Cowhand On The TiVo Grande

As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"